The dress — a floor-length blue-on-white petal print with little round buttons up the bodice and a tight collar — is tiny, tailored for a woman 4 feet 9 inches tall. The wearer was Charlotte Brontë, and her demure day dress, just about big enough for a 12-year-old girl, was the plain wrapping that encased an enormous talent, a bubbling blend of ambition, passion and literary genius.
Like a disembodied spirit, the dress stands at the entrance to “Charlotte Brontë: An Independent Will,” which opens at the Morgan Library & Museum on Friday and runs through Jan. 2. Timed to the 200th anniversary of Brontë’s birth, the exhibition offers a compact, sensitively arranged and surprisingly comprehensive tour of the life and work of one of the Victorian era’s most beloved writers, an object of fascination from the moment that “Jane Eyre” was published under the pen name Currer Bell in 1847. [...]
The passage — one of the sizzlers that made “Jane Eyre” an eyebrow-raiser in its time — may be read in the novel’s bound manuscript, on view for the first time in the United States, and opened to the relevant page. Christine Nelson, a Morgan curator, secured the loan from the British Library and, to complement the Morgan’s deep holdings of Brontë manuscripts, books and drawings, arranged to borrow other items from the National Portrait Gallery in London and the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, Yorkshire.
The exhibition, tracing a fluid, chronological circle, begins by establishing the location. For nearly all her life, Charlotte lived in a modest parsonage in Haworth, northwest of the urban and industrial Bradford and Leeds, perched on the edge of a wild moor. (William Grimes) (Read more)

A Brontë expert is heading for New York – and could get to see a reputedly haunted staircase transported to the USA from Mirfield.
Imelda Marsden, 70, is a renowned Brontë enthusiast and last month helped set up the Kirklees and Calderdale Brontë Group.
Through her connections to the Brontë Society, Imelda has secured an invitation to the prestigious Morgan Library and Museum in New York next month. [...]
Imelda said: “It’s a great honour to be invited and something I just couldn’t turn down. I’ve never been to New York before. It should be a great experience.”
Imelda, of Mirfield, will be in New York for three days and hopes to fix up a visit to see an historic – and reputedly haunted – staircase which has Brontë connections.
The wooden staircase from Blake Hall in Mirfield pictured at the former home of Gladys Topping in Quogue, Long Island, New York.
The hand-carved yew staircase came from the former Blake Hall in Church Lane, Mirfield, where Anne Brontë worked as a governess to the Ingham family in 1839.
After the house was demolished in 1954 all the fixtures and fittings were sold off and the staircase was bought by opera singer Gladys Topping and her husband Allen who were building a house in Quogue, Long Island.
The staircase was installed in the house and in September 1962 Mrs Topping reported that she had seen a ghostly figure of a woman on the stairs.
Spooky tale of 'haunted' staircase from Blake Hall in Mirfield with Bronte links - which has turned up in New York
She was convinced the “pensive” figure with her hair in a bun and dressed in a shawl and long flowing skirt was Anne.
She told a local newspaper at the time that when she asked in her mind who the figure was she was told: “Anne Brontë.”
Though the house has changed hands since the staircase remains and Imelda hopes to go see it.
“I am in touch with the owners of the house and hope to arrange to visit,” she said. “But I’ve no intention of bringing any ghosts back with me!”
Imelda is also hoping to bring a stage performance of Brontë Boy, a play centred on Brontë brother Branwell, to the Lawrence Batley Theatre in Huddersfield, next year.
The play, written by former journalist Michael Yates, will run for three nights and Imelda wants to find business sponsors to help cover the costs. (Martin Shaw)

And more travelling, as The Sydney Morning Herald reviews Wild Island by Jennifer Livett, which is subtitled 'A novel of Jane Eyre and Van Diemen's Land',

Mixing real history with classic fiction, Wild Island imagines Jane Eyre and Rochester making their long passage to Van Diemen's Land. It is the 1830s – dramatic times. Lives were short, and in a brief space of time, everything could be lost: fortunes, husbands, health, entire families, or, as Jane Eyre's Bertha Mason experienced, the mind. [...]
The further he travels from England, the sicker Rochester becomes until, such is the fear for his welfare, they are forced to turn back. But our key narrator, Harriet, continues to the colonies with the task of finding a missing person, and as the intricate story of political intrigue, lies, betrayals and accidents begins to unfold she is quickly caught up in life on the island. [...]Jane Eyre is the jumping-off point but her significance to the story wanes. (Louise Swinn)

Imagine Jane Eyre crossed with the less murdery bits of Last Tango in Paris in the context of claustrophobic rehearsal rooms, dingy pubs and Camden bedsits.
We follow the girl through her first year at acting school, a Stanislavskian training camp similar to the one where the writer herself studied. An early encounter with alcohol is rendered as “my mouth swings wide with unutterable shite. Laughing lots too, like it’s true. Worldening maybe, I think. I hope. Certainly serving to get me bold and fit for whatevers come”. Our heroine is an innocent who has suffered childhood sexual abuse and is now looking for sex on her own terms.
In the end, she entrusts her virginity to a charismatic older actor whom she meets in a bar. An ex-junkie estranged from his family, he has all the rough charm and intrigue of a modern-day Rochester. And while they bond over film and music, it’s sex — painful, disappointing, passionate, redemptive — that becomes their primary means of communication, a way of achieving intimacy without having to put their private traumas into words. But the truth can only be withheld for so long and in an unforgettable middle section, the actor confesses his disturbing past. (Johanna Thomas-Corr)

opens up in the style of a Brontë novel, with a governess showing up at an English manor, expecting to find her Mr. Rochester. Instead, it’s a house of women and she falls for the lady of the house, giving this Victorian setting a queer edge. The play also features a talking dog and moor hen. (Diep Tran)

The popular propagation of this bizarre treatment seems to have started, at least in popular fiction, with Bertha Mason in Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel Jane Eyre. Savagery, in the Victorian mindset, sprung from mental illness led to her confinement and ultimately tragic death. Social critique comes in hot and heavy for her depiction, especially when the trope it formed (The Madwoman in the Attic) rears its ugly head, but it has later been reclaimed as a barb at the sexism and discrimination bred by the financial elite. (Jacob Oller)

Ellis was able to put all this aside, however, while writing her second book - or at least most of it. Take Courage, which comes out next year and has the slightly daunting subtitle of Brontë and the Art of Life, focuses on the lesser known, youngest of the Bronte sisters, Anne.
"There's scant information on Emily and Anne, though tons on Bramwell (sic) and Charlotte," says Ellis. "So it's a journey in search of Anne. Have you read her second novel? It's about a woman who falls for a sexy cad." (John Nathan)

Another triumph for Northern Ballet and what a great opening to the West Yorkshire Playhouse’s Brontë Season.Wuthering Heights was moody, passionate and full of drama. Claude-Michel Schönberg’s score conjured up the wildness of the moors, youthful joy, jealousy, passion and despair so effectively you were transfixed.
Javier Torres as Heathcliffe (sic) was such a powerful presence. He just smouldered, so much so I feared he might spontaneously combust – but he just held it in check. The sequence with Isabella (Rachael Gillespie), after he had been rejected by Cathy (Dreda Blow), was almost frightening in its intensity.
As Cathy and Heathcliffe, Dreda and Javier performed so beautifully – from being so gentle and affectionate, to outright passionate rage and despair. (From my point of view she definitely made the wrong choice, but I don’t suppose we can change the story now!)
The stage design by Ali Allen was superb. It was pared down and simple with magnificent backdrops of what looked like contemporary landscapes made up of great brush strokes of moorland colour – greys, purples etc. This was so effective in the open misty scene. A sole, windswept tree emphasized the bleakness of the terrain. But with small additions the space was transformed into a home, a bedroom and a grand terrace.
Choreographed by Artistic Director David Nixon, who also designed the costumes, Wuthering Heights is a stunning production on every level and I urge you to go and see it if you can. (Brendan)

Northern Ballet, under the direction of Nixon and dramaturge input from Patricia Doyle, certainly works very hard to draw out the emotions from all the characters involved and creates the intensity and intrigue expected from the story. There is a lot to pack in the two and quarter hour ballet and not once did it compromise the characters, the storyline and its emotive themes.
Allen’s sets are certainly of stark contrast but appropriate; the scenes swiftly switches in sequences between the sunshine, colourful and tame life of Thrushcross Grange to the isolated, dark and bleak landscape of the moors and Wuthering Heights. Alastair West’s revived lighting is appropriately applied and captures the moods of all the scenes. Special effects are used as weather elements when Cathy and Heathcliff meet expressing their love and Heathcliff’s contemplation as an old man during the Epilogue.
Schönberg is well known for the music he composed for Les Misérables and Miss Saigon. His creative genius captures the plot, characters and the explorative emotions for Wuthering Heights. Soft piano music and melodious instrumental tunes are played during the scenes at Thrushcross Grange and hauntingly dramatic, melancholic and fast paced music is applied for Wuthering Heights and the moors scenes. (Dawn Smallwood)

Movie Morlocks has selected Andrea Arnold's take on Wuthering Heights as one of 52 remarkable films by women.

Wuthering Heights (Dir. Andrea Arnold; 2011)
Emily Bronte’s classic novel has been adapted for the screen many times but no one has wrestled with the material in such a stark and unforgiving manner. Director Andrea Arnold (Red Road; 2006, Fish Tank; 2009, etc.) forgoes the usual romantic tropes and accentuates the rugged living conditions of the period focusing her constantly shifting camera on the misty moorland landscape and the dirt drenched figures that populate it. The characters in this tragedy are more ghostlike than human, embodying the internal themes that envelope Bronte’s work. In turn, the film is able to relay the darker and more troubling aspects of the story in a way that few other adaptations have.
Arnold employed two black actors (Solomon Glave and James Howson) to portray the tortured Heathcliff, consumed by his unfulfilled passion for Cathy (Shannon Beer & Kaya Scodelario). The casting exemplifies Heathcliff’s position of servitude and makes his plight seem more urgent. Arnold’s directing is confident and she makes bold choices with an avant-garde sensibility that confused and frustrated many critics when it was released. For better or worse, William Wyler’s Academy Award nominated 1939 version of Wuthering Heights has become somewhat of a gold standard that all other versions are compared to but Arnold’s film rejects that template completely and I found it incredibly refreshing and deeply rewarding. (Kimberly Lindbergs)

If I can imagine what it is like to be Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights (1848), or Milkman Dead in Song of Solomon (1977), it is because I can read, and because I read. The sadness of contemplating burned books is not lessened, but I feel slightly better for trying to figure out why it happened.
I can read. I read. (Angelo Fick)